The article will by emphasizing a transnational and geopolitical approach, investigate eight exhibitions of modern art from Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden presented in Nordic cities 1946–1959. The text highlights the importance of this regional context and argues that the artworks can be seen as socially interconnected signs mediated through the communicative agency of the exhibitions. By focusing on subject matter and artwork titles presented, the article suggests that the exhibitions can be viewed as part of interacting artistic, civic, and political agendas aiming to democratize culture in the postwar Nordic welfare states.

The historical study of art in relation to geographical space has for a long time been biased by the “canonical logic” of the centre–periphery narrative. This text takes as its starting point a methodological critique of this binary framework by using an example from Swedish art history, namely the art historical narrative of 1950s Sweden as a slumbering Nordic province slowly being awoken by the heroic and foresighted efforts of the Swedish curator Pontus Hultén. The text analyses two local contexts between 1944 and 1953: a presumed periphery, Stockholm, Sweden, and a presumed centre, Paris, France, and the collaboration between individuals in these two spaces. In focus is a 1953 exhibition in Paris of Swedish abstract art from 1913 to 1953. The text concludes with a methodological discussion arguing that by considering “the material conditions of encounters and exchange”, it becomes clear that the transnational contacts in these cases were spurred by local competition and that they were mutually dependent, rather than a product of diffusions of aesthetic innovation from centre to periphery.

The character of the manual execution and material form of the art object were ascribed little value in the classicist theory of art. The practical act of painting was associated with handicraft and routine. The thrust of the theory was towards the literary and the philosophical and great value was ascribed to the artists' mental creativity and the philosophical treatment of the subject. It is my aim in this dissertation to investigate the separation between the manual/material and the mental/creative in the art of painting and to clarify the role of practice within this theoretical tradition during the second half of the eighteenth century. The texts studied are written by leading art theorists; Joshua Reynolds, Anton Raphael Mengs, Charles-Henri Watelet, Pierre-Charles Levesque, Johann Georg Sulzer, Christian Ludwig von Hagedorn, Charles-Nicolas Cochin and Roger de Piles. One of the most important findings of the study was that the mental and the material were regarded not only as essentially different in kind, but that the relation between them also was of central importance. The picture was regarded as a combination of two effective parts: a carefully formed idea was realized, or produced, through the mediation of a material structure. Practice was thus seen as a tool of thought, and as such it could be ascribed a complementary value. Consequently it was also possible, without contravening the established ranking of the mental and the material, to value and appreciate the material aspect for the important function it fulfilled in the production of the work as a whole. The idea of collaboration between to arts was just as axiomatic as the assumption that, by their very nature, they represented essentially different values. The practical and material aspect of painting should, according to the classicist art theory, draw no attention to itself. It should restrain the expressive powers of the brushwork and the handling of colors and subordinate itself to the mental creativity and the intellectual content. But it was recognized that paintings that did not live up to the highest aims was not for that reason necessarily "poor". In categorizations of styles, genres, national schools of painting and individual artists' works it is possible to see that the theorists did allow more lowly and less highly valued kinds of paintings to be considered and appreciated, without risking any challenge to the established ranking order.  The study shows that such deviations from the classical rules, or any refinements in these rules, need not be regarded as chance exceptions or a temporary suspension of the classical norm, rather, they represent a flexibility permitted within frames that remain intact. Some theorists exploited this freedom and took special interest in the manual and material components. Their texts demonstrate that it was possible to work upon the boundaries between the manual and material aspects. My study also suggests that, during the period studied, the idea of the art of painting as pictorial construction appear to be in question. Too much "artistry" in the technique and staging of the subject is said to obstruct the beholder's perception of the message that the picture has to convey. The distrust in the medium is indicated by these calls for an art both less theatrical and less concerned with its material make-up.

From the perspective of art history and sociology, this article investigates the artist Nils Wedel (1897–1967) and his position as head teacher to the department of decorative painting at the art and design school Slöjdskolan in Gothenburg 1938–1953. The article argues that the recruitment of Wedel can be seen as a strategic outcome of combination of his deviant interest in abstract art (compared to his more successful expressionist contemporaries) and his modest career. Supporting his family as a graphic designer, he was, due to his abstract “inclinations”, isolated from the dominant networks of Francophile and well-tempered expressionist art in Stockholm and Gothenburg in the 1930s and 1940s. However, this homology of aesthetic and social characteristics that positioned him in the margins of contemporary Swedish art made him the perfect teacher to meet the increased demand in Sweden in the late 1930s for art and design artists tuned to modernist idioms and skilled in professional methods of visual design. In commercial work in visual imagery, such as advertisements, shop window displays, or even carpet design, abstraction had become fashionable by the early 1930s. Wedel's introduction of a basic form course in 1946 can be seen as a pedagogical confirmation of this attraction of modernist idioms. In the geographical, social and aesthetic periphery, it was possible to build a pedagogical setting that introduced students to the then historical avant-garde of abstract art and modern idioms while also training skills valuable for a commercial career. © 2015 The Author(s)

At the center of attention of this issue is trans-local, transnational, regional, and worldwide contacts inside and outside the Nordic-Baltic region from the late 1800s to the late 1900s. As an introduction, this text attempts to give an overview of some of its major themes and findings. It highlights how the interactive function of cross-border contacts is demonstrated by cases of art and design transfers, artistic travels, Scandinavian intellectual contacts, and cross-border connections over 100 years. Together, the texts published in this issue reflect the interdependent nature of international relations and the vital function of intermediate positions.

The project Exhibiting Art in a European Periphery? International Art in Sweden during the Cold War aimed to investigate international exhibitions in Sweden during the postwar period from circa 1945 to the end of the 1980s. The main objective was to find information beyond preconceived ideas of what is important, interesting, or simply good art. In this article, we present our method for searching through the archives and some of the findings and insights generated.